Cakes are too dry.....HELP!!!!!

I am brand new to the forum and to cakecentral.com. I am in the process of starting my own cake business but have been noticing that for whatever reason my cakes are turning dry within a day or 2 of baking and decorating them. PLEASE DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS???????? ANY AND ALL WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

When I take my cakes out of the oven i spread some BC thinned with water over them, like a glazed donut. This helps keep them moist, then when i fill them i always " baste" them with simple syrup that i add vanilla extract to. It helps them stay moist also adds a little more flavor. hope this helps.

I actually disagree with the refrigeration thing...I do refrigerate my cakes and my cakes have never been even remotely dry. I think it has more to do with the recipe, actually....and baking time. Overbaked cakes will be dry.

I too always brush my cakes with sugar syrup and leave them covered with saran wrap overnight to let the cake absorb the syrup, and fill and decorate the next day. I cannot tell you enough, what a difference this has made in my cakes!! They are soooo yummy and moist. I learned this from one of Peggy Porchsen's book..."Pretty party cakes". People are always telling me how delicious and moist they are. Hope this helps

Sorry I didn't provide enough details before. So here goes...I have two recipes that I use that are pretty basic:

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake that has baking cocoa dissolved in boiling water first before adding to the mixer, butter, sugar, 4 eggs, vanilla, 3 cups cake flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and 1 cup sour cream. Baked at 350 but I turn my oven back to 325 whenever my recipe calls for 350 and then bake for 30-35 minutes and I usually bake for about 32-33 minutes.

Golden yellow cake that has 3 cups sifted cake flour, baking powder, salt, butter, sugar, 2 eggs, vanilla and milk. Baked at 350, which again I turn my oven back to 325 for 30-35 minutes and I again usually bake for 32-33 minutes.

I take out let cool in pan for 10 minutes, remove from pan then immediately wrap in saran wrap while it's still warm to keep moist. I never refrigerate my cakes as I am not cooking them ahead of time, nor do I freeze them.

I keep them wrapped until I am ready to decorate. Once decorated they are kept in a sealed cake container.

I am completely stumped on why they are drying out......please help!!!!!!

You can try adding a bit of oil to your cake recipe. You may want to swap out some of the butter. The oil seems to retain and distribute moisture better than butter. You also may consider taking out some of the yolks from your eggs. Yolks are great for structure but they seem to dry cakes out. You didn't mention quantities of butter either. You may just need more fat in your cake or sugar to lock in the moisture. I inject my cakes with a syrup too using a large syringe from an animal-feed type store (they are super cheap there) before I wrap them. This ensures that I don't get a gummy sticky layer on the top where I have syruped.

You can try adding a bit of oil to your cake recipe. You may want to swap out some of the butter. The oil seems to retain and distribute moisture better than butter. You also may consider taking out some of the yolks from your eggs. Yolks are great for structure but they seem to dry cakes out. You didn't mention quantities of butter either. You may just need more fat in your cake or sugar to lock in the moisture. I inject my cakes with a syrup too using a large syringe from an animal-feed type store (they are super cheap there) before I wrap them. This ensures that I don't get a gummy sticky layer on the top where I have syruped.

NO, yolks are fat for the most part. Yolks do not add structure. The whites are protien they add the structure in an egg.

The recipe I use is by Peggy Porschen...1 1/4 cup of sugar to 1 cup of water...boil until the sugar is dissloved, once lukewarm you can add flavoring...such as extracts or liquors. I brush every layer including sides, top and bottom...wrap in saran wrap and let it sit overnight on my counter to let the syrup infuse into the cake. I cannot tell you how many people tell me how moist my cakes are

I know most of the fat is in the yolks but for some reason they seem to dry out cakes. I have read and experienced this though I am not sure why. Has anyone else noticed this? I have also noticed that cakes made with all whites generally have/require less fat than all yolk or whole egg based ones. My food science books just don't cover this in their cake chemistry sections. My background is in biochemistry and this yolk-white thing boggles me. I may have to hit the journals but was just wondering if anyone else had a clue why?

The cakes that use mostly whites are a egg foam cake. They require the whites to give/aid in the leavening process. There is no way egg yolks add to the dryness of a cake. They are a tenderizer. They just don't act that way.

What about just white butter cakes though? My whole questioning started when I made a vegan lemon cake (egg-free obviously) and it was more moist with less fat than some of the other butter cakes I make. I know part of it might be an oil/butter issue. But I know I have read that Dede Wilson accidentally left all of the yolks out of a cake once and she found it was more moist. Maybe its an emulsificaiton issue?

I'd add yolks to increase the fat, so I'm with Mike on this one. The amount of fat in a yolk is small compared to what you're probably getting from other sources of fats in the recipe, though, so I doubt that the vegan cake was moist based on the lack of eggs. It was probably the other sources of fats that had more of an effect on it.

Did the vegan cake have oil in it instead of a margarine or another type of shortening? When I do vegan cakes the ones that use oil instead for the solid shortenings are definitely softer and have a better mouthfeel.

The vegan cake did use oil, but it still had far less fat than my butter cakes.

I think it is not a simple fat/protein issue. I am going to go try and read some food science journals and see if I can find anything out.

It probably has something to do with the gluten in the flour and how much beating is done before the batter is baked, too. I have one recipe that's tougher than I like when I follow the directions, so I underbeat it and it works fine. Let us know if you find anything out.

I couldn't find anything in the Journal of Food Science. Plus I could only view abstracts online. I am going to email a professor of food and science technology at my alma mater and see if he has any insight.

Actually, the science behind the effect you observed is quite well understood (and is part of the Food Science training that our students receive).When consumers of baked goods talk about moistness or dryness, they are not referring to the physical chemistry of water. Actually, both moistness and dryness as we perceive them from a sensory standpoint relates to the amount of fat or shortening in the recipe. So, as taught in our food chemistry courses, egg yolks contain mostly lipids and phospholipids (sometimes referred to as lecithins). Egg yolk leithins include phosphatidyl choline, phosphatidyl ethanolamine, phosphatidyl serine etc. which are extremely effective in emulsifying oil and water. (Just think about mayonnaise. ) So its not surprising that the more egg yolks you would add to a cake recipe, the more dryer the cake crumb would be if you didnt add correspondingly greater amounts of oil to the formula. If you kept adding more and more oil to the recipe for a constant amount of eggs, at some point you would overcome the emulsifying ability of the egg yolks and the texture would become moist again. So indeed, science helps us understand more about how foods perform and function!

I hope this is helpful to you all. I know I always feel better when there is a scientific reason for the things that I observe. Happy baking!

Yeah, mlolmar, you're right. A lot of the vegan recipes that I've made have oil in them, and they're moist like a muffin texture. The ones that don't use oil tend to have a dryer texture. An unbalanced recipe will give you a dry cake, just the same way that bad baking skills will. The eggs are generally the last culprit that you should look at when you're talking about a dry cake.

I have a white cake recipe that used only egg whites, and its moistness was vastly improved when I subsituted one whole egg for one of the whites. The yolk adds fat and on balance will make the cake softer, and more "moist" feeling in the mouth.

I too always brush my cakes with sugar syrup and leave them covered with saran wrap overnight to let the cake absorb the syrup, and fill and decorate the next day. I cannot tell you enough, what a difference this has made in my cakes!! They are soooo yummy and moist. I learned this from one of Peggy Porchsen's book..."Pretty party cakes". People are always telling me how delicious and moist they are. Hope this helps

I also learned this from that same book. Its a great way to flavour your cakes as well. I bake my cakes, let cool, use a skewer to make tiny holes through it, then pour the syrup over with a small spoon, making sure to cover the whole cake evenly. Then wrap in cling film(saran wrap) overnight, the next day theyre ready to go.

Peggy Porchsen also does some amazing royal icing work, runouts etc. Learnt a lot from her books. Highly recommend them.